April 12th, 1830
At night at Torlonia’s to see the girandola, which is as fine as fireworks can be, but nothing will do after the illumination of St. Peter’s. All the world was there at an assembly after the ceremony, at which I was introduced to Don Michele Gaetani, said to be the cleverest man in Rome, and I had a long conversation with Monsignore Spada, who is a young layman with ecclesiastical rank and costume, and a judge. A Monsignore holds ecclesiastical rank at Rome, as a Lady of the Bedchamber at St. Petersburg holds military rank, where she is a major-general; there is no other. He is free to marry, and I presume to do anything else, but he must preserve a certain orthodox gravity of dress and conduct; he is a curious nondescript, about an equal mixture of the cardinal and the dandy. This Monsignore is a very clever, agreeable man, and gave me some information about the administration of law in this country. There seems to be a good deal of laxity in it, for a man was condemned for stabbing another (with premeditation) a little while ago to six months’ imprisonment, or more perhaps; and having been George Hamilton’s laquais de place, his family came to him and begged him to try and get him off. He applied to Spada, and got the punishment commuted to some trifling imprisonment, and when he got out he came, with all his family, to kiss Hamilton’s hand.